Description

‘Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angela Carter and Anais Nin – the book I really really needed’ SARAH PERRY, author of The Essex Serpent

‘The sentences sing on the page with wit and intelligence … This memorable novel reminds the reader of the enduring power of storytelling to transform and even save lives, then and now’ THE NEW YORK TIMES

Why don’t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?

Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV’s fever dream. It’s a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you’ll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here – no matter how highly born they are.

No one knows this better than Madame Marie d’Aulnoy. Each week, a rogue group of intellectuals gather at her Parisian home to debate, flirt and perform Contes de Fees – fairy tales – that challenge the status quo, at a salon that will change the course of literature forever. But while they weave tales of glass slippers, enchanted beasts and long-haired princesses, a wolf is lurking, who threatens to destroy the members of the salon one by one.

Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, The Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.

‘Funny, filthy, dancingly clever: a delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairytales. It reminded me of Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, and I gobbled it all up’ JOANNA QUINN, author of The Whalebone Theatre

‘Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable’ KAREN JOY FOWLER, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

‘Pollard’s future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed’ THE I, praise for Delphi

Publisher Review

Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angela Carter and Anais Nin – the book I really really needed * Sarah Perry, author of THE ESSEX SERPENT * Funny, filthy, dancingly clever … A delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairytales, set against the lavish decadence of 1600s Versailles. I gobbled it all up * Joanna Quinn, author of THE WHALEBONE THEATRE * Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable * Karen Joy Fowler, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves * Lush and gossipy, rich and wonderfully indulgent. The Modern Fairies is wickedly playful yet lingers, with emotional truth, long after reading. A feast of a novel. I dare you to read it! * Molly Aitken, author of THE ISLAND CHILD * The Modern Fairies gives us intimate access to the most prestigious of private Parisian salons. In a novel both aching and cruel, sumptuous and tender, Pollard’s beautiful writing leads us along winding pathways. Through its prickling branches to exquisite clearings of hope, this book consumed me. * Katie Hale, author of MY NAME IS MONSTER * Pollard’s future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed * The i, praise for DELPHI * ‘Brilliant … Born of searing eloquence and sinister wit’ * Jackie Polzin, author of BROOD, praise for DELPHI * This feels impressive … What good fiction is meant to do * New York Times, praise for DELPHI * Vivid as fireworks … Both terrifying and exhilarating * Doireann Ni Ghriofa, author of A GHOST IN THE THROAT, praise for DELPHI * [A] luxuriously told romantic comedy * The Idler *